


A Brief Selection of Poems from "Songs of Squalor" (2nd Ed.)

by evelyn_b



Category: WODEHOUSE P. G. - Works
Genre: Canadian Literature, Gen, Other, Poetry, personal grievances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 12:49:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4349438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evelyn_b/pseuds/evelyn_b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Includes a selection of the most famous original Songs as well as new verses inspired by events surrounding McTodd's visit to England.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Brief Selection of Poems from "Songs of Squalor" (2nd Ed.)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosencrantz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosencrantz/gifts).



**Curved Victory, Or, The Poet's Parabola**

Across the pale parabola of joy  
Thru damask-dark and searching spun  
Ariadne's web of dun  
Dew-dazzled in the dawn's alloy  
My heart-quick songs like rivers run!

Stand, sounds! Beneath the farmer's aching hand  
All chapped and ruddy with the day  
Buried sunbeams burst to play  
In green-grass graves beside the strand  
My heart-quick songs run fast away! 

Beneath such bright parabolas untold  
The Earth's broad bosom sighs and sinks  
Shadowéd my heart's bill drinks  
The wav'ring waters of sunset gold  
The curvature of Nature's inks!

Heart-quick my songs! And silver-backéd squirm  
These fish of flexible delight!  
Ranbows arched of bended light:  
Of poetry these are the germ  
In heart-quick parabolic flight!

Bend now, O Joy, a while beyond my song  
To catch the calling lark a-wing  
Grasses gasp to brownly sing  
That note, heart-quick, dissolved ere long  
That marks the curvature of Spring. 

 

**Song of Chicken Giblets**

Soft was your hand when you came to me, O love  
Softer were the meats you laid upon my tongue  
Sweet were the thirsts I slaked at your lips, O love  
Sweeter were the juices of our first embrace  
And O! how the mem'ry of that sweetness stung  
The greater, when Cruelty took its place!

Soft were your eyes when you pledged to me, O love  
Softer the flesh you lovingly stewed and served  
Sharp was my hunger that holy night, O love  
Sharper the tang of chicken giblets basted  
In gravy of a richness scarce deserved  
By any of Earth's lovers – yet this we tasted! 

Careless the joys of our salad days, O lost  
More careless still, how quickly they were scorned!  
Reckless, we tasted love, but at what cost?  
More recklessly did you pass that dish to guests  
Heedless of how my heart would be enthorned  
For nothing but the moment's politesse!

Fair love, this parching chafes our carvéd flesh  
A staleness now no gravy could allay  
Nor all the wines of Madeira refresh,  
To see the precious meat serv'd fast away!  
A toughness in our tender parts has grown  
That once in satiety, now in hunger groan. 

 

**Song of the Cigar That was Never Ordered**

England, for long have I mouthed at thee like a pap, hung'ring  
for the milk of thy poetry, yearning like a wayward boy  
For the cigar you denied me 

The cigar I will never smoke  
Alone among those wreaths of blue and fragrant smoke  
As though in a blue and fragrant dream I passed  
Beneath your sleepy condescention. England! 

Foul hag and old man, these parents I disown!  
For I am of the continent that leafs forth in abundance  
The tobacco you so callously withhold!  
Dominion is my own, my own broad wind-swept soul  
Needs no permission from the fat or withered  
or flower-addled butt-ends of empire old!

I have smoked you, England, with or without your leave  
I have drunk deep of your fragrances and your quickly-smothering embers  
Your language is in my veins and my heart beats fast in your confining ribs  
My lungs are of the great West, and they have drawn in your smoke  
Miserly England, sucked into my flesh without invitation!  
All you have denied me is mine already!  
Thy wealth is my wealth, and my wealth is mine also!  
In snubbing me, you have snubbed Poetry itself!  
And the great West with its fragrant blue dome of cloud  
Will stub you out on the pavement of the world!

 

**Song for the Singers of Canada Yet Unborn**

I have caught you, song-fish, and will shake you free  
To twist from the fragrant filament of my net  
When I have taught you to sing of your home, that the sea may not forget 

The wild worm-wind of the West's waving witchy womb  
The sorcerous song of the ship-sunk shores of the stony East  
The sibilant scented silence that shimmered where we sat  
Begat in the bowered daybreak, beswimm't in bursting bloom

Ah! there will be room

Room in these roaming tracks baked white  
Room for the hollow day and the pacing restless night 

Room for the heavy bucket heft in maidens' arms deep-tanned  
With holy heaviness of liquid in that parched and panting land 

Room for the bottles brown and empty on the splinter'd sill  
And the wild song of waste in the wasteland's bubbling rill  
Room to embrace and fall back and crawl back alone in the night loud with noises  
Room to weep on the sod and greet a pale ash-pink day without choices 

Still room and more room and greater for Dominion's homeless song  
Sing then for silence and shimmer, sing loud and sweet and long!

Sing, maids and men of Dominion, though the grass-winds drown thy wending  
Thou art made for song and the mud and the mud's stone-dry ghost on the prairie unending.

**Author's Note:**

> What do we know about Ralston McTodd? From the evidence in _Leave it to Psmith_ , we know that he likes alliteration, his work is sometimes considered "a bit thick," he's the toast of the Prairie Provinces, the title of his book is _Songs of Squalor_ , and he tends to take things a bit hard. From these hints, and a few fragments preserved within the text of _Leave it to Psmith_ , I have tried to reconstruct a few of his poems.
> 
> "Song of Chicken Giblets" and "Song of the Cigar that was Never Ordered" are poems written in response to events alluded to in _Leave it to Psmith_ , while "Curved Victory" and "Song For the Singers of Canada" reflect the poet's broader aesthetic concerns.


End file.
